B. Balenciaga Intense Balenciaga 2016

When it’s really hot, that is, hot for a Northerner like me, meaning when it’s over 30 degrees Celsius in the shade and you mistakenly think you see water on the streets, can’t trust your eyes, and start thinking of all the various desert scenes from your entire television and comic upbringing, then B. Balenciaga Intense is a welcome anchor that brings you back to the northern German ground of reality: No, that’s just a street, just a mirage, no water, and we are roughly at 53 degrees north latitude.

On such a day, one should take B. Balenciaga Intense and enjoy the rugged down-to-earthness, green, dry, fresh, cool, like water in the distance and somehow taciturn, reduced to the essentials, just like the men on the bench in the advertisement for Flensburger Pilsener. More words, more intensity, more floral notes, more movement, more of anything just doesn’t work in the heat anyway.

But what about a day like today: 53 degrees north latitude, 18 degrees Celsius, drizzling rain?
I spray on B. Balenciaga Intense and - I’m already thinking of a mirage again. Am I crazy? Am I imagining this? Is this really the same scent?
Herb violet leaf green-nutty with a hint of fig. And then a basket flower stink in my nose, often listed as blackcurrant in pyramids. Aha, and there it is. It follows with minty-herb lemon balm for many hours, distinctly lemon balm. This scent is no longer taciturn, no longer reserved, no longer reduced to a freshness anchor for the essentials.
The addition of "Intense" now lives up to its name, but somehow I find it too bitter-herb, too intense, too verbose for a Northerner like me.

I only like it when it’s over 30 degrees Celsius in the shade.